Validity and Reproducibility of a Self-administered Food Frequency Questionnaire Used in the Baseline Survey of the JPHC Study Cohort I

Abstract

We examined the validity and reproducibility of a 44-item food frequency questionnaire used in a baseline survey of the Japan Public Health Center-Based Prospective Study Cohort I conducted in February 1990. Subjects were 94 men and 107 women selected on a voluntary basis among respondents to the baseline survey. Four or five years after the baseline survey, they provided four 7-day diet records during a 1-year period, and then responded to the same questionnaire a second time. The median (range) for energy-adjusted correlation coefficients between 30 nutrients measured by the questionnaire and the diet records was 0.36 (0.06-0.81) for men and 0.37 (0.11-0.52) for women. The median correlation (range) for 17 food groups was 0.30 (0.08-0.75) for men and 0.28 (0.08-0.46) for women. The median correlation (range) for energy-adjusted correlation coefficients between the two questionnaires was 0.24 (0.04-0.69) for men and 0.50 (0.27-0.60) for women for the nutrients, and 0.34 (0.15-0.63) for men and 0.48 (0.18-0.55) for women for the food groups, respectively. The results indicate that this brief food frequency questionnaire provides reasonably valid and reproducible measures of consumption for many nutrients and food groups, and is useful for examining the association between diet and health in the Japanese population. J Epidemioi2003;13(Suppl):S125-S133.Key words: food frequency questionnaire, validity, reproducibility, dietary record, prospective study. Center Districts (Ninohe, Yokote, Saku, Katsushika-kita, and Ishikawa) were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire including a 44-item food frequency section, which is referred to as the baseline food frequency questionnaire 1 (BFFQ1)9. Completed questionnaires were collected from 50,245 subjects, with a response rate of 82%. SubjectsThe subjects of this validation study were a subsample of the participants in the prospective study in four districts, omitting one area in Tokyo (Katsushika-kita). We selected 122 men and 125 women on a voluntary basis. Table 1 summarizes the sequence of data collection. In three districts of mainland Japan (Ninohe, Yokote and Saku), we obtained 7-day diet records four times in different seasons in 1994, five years after the baseline survey, and administered the same questionnaire (BFFQ2) again in February, 1995. In one district of Okinawa Island, we collected 7-day diet records in the winter and summer of 1995, and the second questionnaire was administered in February 1996. We collected the diet records only twice in this sub-tropical area because the seasonal variations in diet were small. We also collected fasting blood and 24-hour stored urine samples twice, in February and

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